The Hourglass Sanatorium

After receiving a telegram, Joseph goes to an immense sanatorium to visit his father who, he fears, is already dead. In this building of infinite dimensions, the hero faces a magma of memories, fantasies, and dreams who appear successively as if in a trance and of which he will try to make sense. The film then becomes a literal translation of oneirism into cinema. Traditional narrative logic is put aside in order to hypnotise the spectator with striking visions of beauty which sometimes evoke Fellini, Lynch or Gilliam. We thus revolve in a imaginal or threshold space, an in-between of Life and Death. Winner of the Cannes Special Jury Prize in 1973, this adaptation of The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz is the grand feverish masterpiece of Has, a mental odyssey to be appreciated in a beautifully restored version.

– Maxime Lachaud